


destroy from the inside

by thistidalwave



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-04
Updated: 2012-09-04
Packaged: 2017-11-13 13:04:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/503833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thistidalwave/pseuds/thistidalwave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erica is sixteen and a werewolf and she doesn't know what she's doing (but does anyone, really?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	destroy from the inside

**Author's Note:**

> this is probably a bit of a mess, i'm not sure, but it wanted to be written. i have a lot of feelings about erica, it seems. set somewhere in the middle of 2x11, i think.

Erica is sixteen, young and beautiful, with blonde hair framing her face, lips painted red like a mask to hide her fangs, to hide her claws, to hide the part of her that’s still broken even though she thought she found a way to fix it.

Erica is sixteen and she doesn’t have her driver’s licence, but she does have eyes that flash yellow in the darkness, legs that run faster than she ever dreamed she could go, and yet when she runs away, she does it with human feet and human hands and human teeth digging into her lower lip in concentration so that she doesn’t fall down.

Erica is sixteen and she’s never really had a family, just a mother who lives in her house and sometimes even slept there, a mother who Erica knows tries, tries to support her, tries to help her, tries to love her. A mother who fails, usually, and Erica had thought - maybe she was better off without her. Her mother is better off without Erica, she means. 

Erica is sixteen and she’s in love with the idea of love, the kind that people write epic music with soaring notes that break and somehow fit back together about, the kind that people pretend to understand, pretend until they don’t even know they’re pretending anymore, and then they’re bleeding out on the floor, gripping someone’s hand and saying _it was for you._ She sees the way Scott and Allison look at each other and feels her stomach twist, recognizes that look even though she’s never seen it in real life before, and wants to break it, wants to tear it apart and leave it for the vultures.

Erica is sixteen and all she wants is for someone to look at her. She looks at the wiry frame of Stiles’s body, the strong set of his hands, and the way he doesn’t seem to know how to keep track of it all, lets it flail about, speaking for him where words don’t fit, and she thinks that maybe she could help him put it together, make it make sense. 

She looks at Derek, thinks she sees strength, power, a chance at something _more,_ but then he bites her and she gets new eyes and when she looks at them through those, he’s just ash held together by skin and sinew and his hands don’t know how to touch except to hurt, but she thinks that maybe - maybe once, they knew better. 

She looks at Isaac and sees a reflection of herself, broken down insides encased in the smooth perfect lines of unblemished skin and hidden by a smirk, and she curls one hand into his hair and sticks the other one down his pants as if she's a girl brazen enough to do that sort of thing, and tugs him apart to see if it makes more sense when it’s not herself she’s trying to put back together. It doesn’t.

Erica is sixteen and violence comes to her as easy as breathing. She thinks that’s wrong, really. It shouldn’t feel so good to hear someone’s skin break apart and know she did that. It shouldn’t feel so good to dig claws into metal, lean into someone else’s space and watch them bite their lip and look _afraid_ , for a second. It shouldn’t be so gratifying to run her hand up someone’s thigh, to bare perfect white teeth at someone else and ask _would you rather it was your thigh_ and pretend to herself that she doesn’t mean it. It shouldn’t, but it does, so she shoves it down and pretends it isn’t there.

Erica is sixteen and feels like she’s lived a lifetime in the space of a couple weeks. It wasn’t so long ago, she thinks in the dead of night, trying and failing to fall asleep, that she was imperfect and trying for something she could never have, shaking limbs and rolling eyeballs keeping her down, her hair frizzy and flat and boring, her hands shaking out of her control on her best days. 

It wasn’t so long ago that she looked less than she feels, no, that was just one minute ago, yesterday and tomorrow, the day before that and the day after that, last year and next year. 

Erica is sixteen and she doesn’t know what she wants, but sometimes she likes to pretend, to hold on to Boyd's hand, strong and reliable and there, and make decisions like she knows what she’s doing, to walk away from things she knows aren’t right and maybe, just maybe, not come running back in the end.


End file.
